Bon soir, DU! The Friday Afternoon Challenge is here with: “Making the art of trees.”

[CTyankee]

Last edited Sat Aug 18, 2012, 10:36 AM - Edit history (1)

Here are six renderings of trees for you to identify along with the artist.

And, please play nice and don’t cheat...

1.Study of Tree Trunks, John Constable
[IMG][/IMG]

2. Abbey in Oak Forest, Friedrich
[IMG][/IMG]

3. The Lost Jockey, Magritte
[IMG][/IMG]

4. The Vegetable Garden with Donkey, Miro
[IMG][/IMG]

5. Gray Tree, Mondrian
[IMG][/IMG]

6. Pear Tree, Klimt
[IMG][/IMG]

[pinboy3niner]

1. #5: Mondrian, The Gray Tree

[CTyankee]

4. of course! Good for you!

[progressoid]

9. That's the first one I noticed too.

Love Mondrian's early work.

[librechik]

2. 2 is Caspar David Friedrich

pretty! and memorable...

[CTyankee]

5. Pretty? I think it's scary!

Are you a big fan of Friedrich?

[librechik]

8. yeah--it's pretty scary

he was trying to depict that beauty one can find in bereft and neglected landscapes, as opposed to the previous era which drooled over opulence and ownership. It was a revolution.

[CTyankee]

12. gotta love Romanticism...Freidrich was a real exponent of it...

[OriginalGeek]

3. I got no idea so while I await the answers

a musical interlude:

[pinboy3niner]

6. #6: Gustav Klimt, Pear Tree

[librechik]

10. that's good; I would have guessed Seurat

CTyankee is tricky!

(love ya gal)

[CTyankee]

21. Of course! Last month I went into Manhattan to see the Klimt show. I think this was one

in the showing and I thought how nice the trees he did were...so I researched them and found this beautiful one...

[Brickbat]

7. No. 6...

Klimt's "Pear Tree."

But no Bob Ross? No happy little trees? And you call this ART?

[Brickbat]

11. No. 4...

Miro, "Vegetable Garden With Donkey."

[CTyankee]

13. Yep. I almost went with "The Farm" by Miro just because of the fabulous back story...

Hemingway owned it and it was his favorite painting. AFter he committed suicide,his widow Mary donated The Farm to the National Gallery in Washington. So I thought it was probably a little too obvious.

But this one was really nice, too. It is a charming memoir of his childhood and before he went pretty surrealist...

[blaze]

36. OK... total art ignoramus here...

I don't get what's going on in the sky in #4

[CTyankee]

38. It is odd. I think it is his slowly moving towards surrealism.

But read this! Exciting new direction here! Very interesting! http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/reviews/joan-mir243-tate-modern-london-2268835.html

thought provoking, at the very least, don't you think?

[progressoid]

14. Thank you!

That one was driving me crazy!

[CTyankee]

16. Hi, nice to see you! Are you new here?

Great to see new names and posts on the Friday Afternoon Challenge! Glad to see you!

[progressoid]

17. Hi!

Sort of new. I've seen a previous challenge or two but haven't had the time to thoroughly review them.

[CTyankee]

20. Tell me how you have an interest in art...I love to hear about it...

[progressoid]

22. I have a degree in art.

Mother taught high school art. Dad taught science. So I went into photography .

Should have done more painting. Wished I had more time for it. But as of yesterday we are empty-nesters, so maybe I can break out the brushes again.

[CTyankee]

24. Oh, wonderful! We have a nice group here so you'll find a good, safe haven!

I hope you have seen some of the earlier Challenges. They were fun! I think we have run through several hundred years of art history in the last 2 1/2 years since the Challenge came into being!

I'm glad you are going back into painting. I couldn't draw if my life depended on it, but I love art and study it daily in retirement, so I can relate...boy, can I!

[CTyankee]

15. Oh, my goodness, here we are with # 1 and #3 left! Ya'll are good, as usual!

[progressoid]

18. Oooh Oooh Oooh. #3 Magritte's "The Lost jockey"

[CTyankee]

19. Hey, you are good! Welcome! This is a tough group....hard to fool anyone here.

Tell us how you know the Magritte! We love the stories...

[progressoid]

23. Well,

I got lucky. Don't post anything from earlier than the 19th century. Or from Asia. I slept through a lot of those classes.

[CTyankee]

25. Ah, the 19th century! Your day is coming next week...sorry to give it away...oh, well...

but really, you should go to Florence and get acquainted there...you'll find a lot that is related to your 19th century stuff...nothing is new under the sun, as the saying goes. Just ask Kenneth Clark...

[CTyankee]

28. I meant to mention that I am going to Brussels in October and will see the new Magritte

Museum. I am so excited! I also want to see his house.

Brussels has renovated an Art Nouveau part of town which I very much want to see. I love that period in art...it is very "tendresse" to me. I think of it as a special place in my heart...

[progressoid]

44. Jealous!

We had a friend who was a big fan of Art Nouveau and Art Deco. We inherited a few minor things she had collected.

Hoping that sometime in the future we'll again be able to afford to go overseas. It's been too long.

[CTyankee]

45. I've been traveling to Europe since I retired at the end of 2004.

I just try to get the best deal I can find. I have a "bucket list" which I take very seriously. Belgium has the genius of Rubens (Antwerp), Memling (Bruges), Magritte (Brussels), and Van Eyck (Ghent). And I'd really love to go to the south of France, particularly Provence.

Lucky that I live in close proximity to some terrific museums, being halfway between NYC and Boston and I try to get to Los Angeles to see my grandson at least once a year. L.A. has some wonderful museums...

[CTyankee]

61. I'm getting one of those Orbitz deals. It's pretty good. I plan on going and training out of

Brussels to Ghent, Antwerp and Bruges on day trips. I kinda like European trains anyway. It puts me in a good mood...

See what you can do with Orbitz if you want to travel anywhere. Or the other travel websites.

As I always say, "once you're there, you're there..."

[blaze]

43. LOL... just had to say your Oooh Oooh Oooh cracked me up. nt

[CTyankee]

26. Number 1. Oh my goodness...when you find out who it is...

((falls on fainting couch, clutching pearls...))

[blaze]

50. I found Number 1!!!

But I cheated, big time, so I'll not post a spoiler.

[CTyankee]

51. Thanks for being honest, blaze! I think just about everybody does respect the "no cheat and

'guess'" rule here. Some folks warned me ominously that once people figured out how to cheat that the Challenge would just fall apart. But just the opposite has happened! I think it is because people here really like to do research altho I think it would be difficult to do with #1, not having more of a hint.

[blaze]

54. The educated guesses are half the fun!

People with knowledge of different styles and eras and all... The guesses are as informative as the answers!

[CTyankee]

55. you are absolutely right! DUers are incredibly well informed about art.

I cannot tell you how many DUers on my Challenge posts tell me about an art course they took in college as an elective and how they remember it to this day and how the art just stayed with them over the years, even tho they weren't art majors!

[elleng]

27. You did it again, yank!

You're so popular!!!

[CTyankee]

29. Hey, thanks and hi there! Nice to see you!

I hope you are well and all is well with your family!

[elleng]

32. Thanks.

Going OK.
Beach w Julie (and my high school friend) next weekend!

[CTyankee]

33. Beach is good!

I was on Chappy with dtr in July. The Vineyard gets overloaded the first two weeks in August, so ta ta to that...

No Door County this summer. It's a bummer, because no symphony but we'll manage, I guess.

Life goes on, however sad...

[Alduin]

30. I love the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich, #2.

They're hauntingly beautiful.

[CTyankee]

31. They kinda scare me, but that's because they seem so bleak. But I get that.

Friedrich is the premium Romantic artist of the sublime. this painting is just one manifestation of that sublime, which means something very different from our present day of the meaning. In those days, the sublime was something dramatic in nature, almost mystical, exciting to the senses. It was interesting...

[CTyankee]

34. You don't find them at least a bit scary? I sure do. Not in a shocking way...more in a

kind of depressing way, a sort of feeling of apprehension and dread...

[Alduin]

35. Nope.

I suffer from major depression, so they express what I'm feeling.

I find quiet comfort in them.

[blaze]

37. Oh, that's interesting Alduin

It's quite remarkable how art can affect us all so differently.

[CTyankee]

40. do you feel it is a confirmation of your feelings, a kind of "blessing" of your real self?

I truly wonder because I look at some of these works and think "what are they trying to tell me?"

[Alduin]

48. Yeah.

That's how I feel.

[CTyankee]

53. You know, I say this often but I'll say it again. Someone once said "Art always saves you."

For some reason, I've found that to be true. When I am in mourning over the death of a loved one I turn to Brahms Requiem, cry, play it again, cry again. I suppose you could call it grief therapy. When I am depressed I just pore over my art books or just immersing myself in the library's offerings. The pathos and beauty of so much in painting and sculpture never fails to comfort me in my own personal way...

[Alduin]

59. If I could like a post, I'd like your's.

Yes. That's how I deal with grief also.

Art definitely saves us all.

[CTyankee]

60. Here is Auden's take on it:

Musee des Beaux Arts

W. H. Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

[blaze]

39. One of the things I love about these challenges

is that one or two of the art works presented will really stand out for me. I see it and say, "Oh! I LOVE that!"

I know squat about art... but have begun researching the artists that these threads point me too...

This week it is #1!!!! (which as of this moment has yet to be identified)

Thanks again CTyankee for these threads! I really look forward to them!

[CTyankee]

41. someone else told me what you did, that they started researching artists that the threads

piqued their interest. I am incredibly flattered but also really happy that this is an outcome of my little project! It makes me happy.

This Challenge started when I decided that the treatment of trees in art must have had a grand unifying principle in art...maybe symmetry or something grand like that. But I found that trees were simply a mechanism for artists to express what they felt about art and how they treated the autonomous space on the canvas. It was a revelation to me! You look at the Mondrian and see how it means a transition from realism to abstract. The Klimt becomes an exercise in his Symbolist philosophy, but probably also his idea of beauty in the Art Nouveau. Magritte goes totally Expressionist/Surrealist.Miro is already in transition to Surrealism and his sky betrays it. Trees are no longer the Big Symbol. They are the Transit point!

[blaze]

42. But trees, in and of themselves, are IT for me!!

I remember a Girl Scout camp I went to where our "church" service was held. Tall, towering trees... the sunlight streaked through in ways that painters could only imagine.

Okay... wait... transit point.... trying to absorb.

LOVE these threads!!!

[CTyankee]

47. From my research, that is exactly what the artist in #1 was trying to get: sunlight streaked

through trees, which he achieves, IMO. When I look at this one, I feel a kind of peacefulness on a summer afternoon, seeing that quiet effect and wanting to capture a very fleeting moment forever on canvas...it mesmerizes me...

[Rowdyboy]

49. Just adding a voice to repeat how much your efforts are appreciated

I dom't know art either but I love your challenges and learning the answers.

[CTyankee]

52. Thanks, rowdyboy! I'll post the last answer (if it isn't guessed yet) later today...

[joeybee12]

56. I know none of these, but they're all great! Thanks!

[CTyankee]

57. Hi, joeybee! Nice to see you!

backatcha!

[CTyankee]

58. Hey folks! Answers are listed above each image.

#1 is by John Constable, btw.

You guys are amazing. Thanks so much for enriching me and everyone with your insights.

There will be another Challenge next week and I hope you will be able to participate!